Living with Intention in Relationships

I remember being small and often visiting an elderly couple who always had an awkward silence between them.  They never referred to each other in terms of endearment.  They never touched.  They rarely looked directly at each other.  Their recliners were side by side with a small table between and it might as well have been a brick wall. 

It was not the comfortable silence of two people who have spent their lives in such togetherness that they didn't need words to fill the air because they each knew what the other was thinking without speaking audibly.  It was the bitter tense silence of a lifetime of disappointment, discontent and betrayal. 

Living with Intention: Part 1

One of my absolute favorite quotes that I have repeated to myself a million times
over since I discovered it when I was a teenager!

I’m here!  Happy very belated Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year – ouch has it really been that long since I’ve posted?!  If you follow me on Twitter, Pinterest or Google+ then you’ll know that I’m still alive and sharing content on those streams but admittedly, time and compulsion to write just have not meshed in a long time.  Part of that is due to a promotion at work that has left me very fulfilled with a much lower stress level but also lacking the ability to complete a sentence by the end of most days… 

But I often think of you and want to share things – and I do through those other mediums so please consider following me on one or all of those sites!  I read an article yesterday that I shared on Google+ on the struggle to not melt down like a toddler (while yelling at our children to stop acting the same way) when things aren’t going perfectly and it reminded me of a post I started to write to you all about living with intention. 

In this particular article, this mother talked about choosing to react differently.  One of the saying I use with my very independent children often is “You choose.  You can make a good choice or a bad choice and that will determine how everything else goes.  And you can choose to act differently even after you make a bad choice.”

So often when I say this to my kids I feel hypocritical.  While I try to live by this, I am far from perfect.  And in those moments when I lose it and let the little things get to me, I hear myself saying this to my kids and look at their faces and know they hear it too…